Dear University Community,

With the passage of the 2021-22 General Appropriations Act by both chambers of the 112^th General Assembly last week, I wanted to provide the campus community with an update of items impacting MTSU.  It closely follows the recommended budget and administration amendment presented by the Governor earlier in the session.  Outlined below are the specifics of how the passage of this budget impacts the University.

Recurring Operating Funds – MTSU will receive $5.5 million in new funding for the 2021-22 fiscal year, which includes partial funding for a 4.0 percent salary pool to be distributed at the discretion of the University.  Since state funding for salary increases is provided at approximately 55%, university funds will need to be added to fully fund the pool. The salary pool is composed of 2.0 percent effective January 1, 2021, and 2.0 percent effective July 1, 2021.  I will be making recommendations to our Board of Trustees in the upcoming Finance and Personnel Committee meetings on the distribution and funding of the salary pool.

Non – Recurring Operating Funds:

• Funding of $1.2 million is included to provide continued financial aid for the Medical Education Program jointly administered by MTSU and Meharry Medical College.
• The Budget includes $2.6 million for our new Data Science Pipeline initiative.The funding will enable partnerships with K-12 schools, higher education, government, and industry to identify needs in data science education. The goal is to build a complete education pipeline from K-12 through PhD.

Capital Outlay – Funding for MTSU’s Applied Engineering Building at $50.5 million.  The total project cost for this building is $54.9 million which includes a match requirement of $4.4 million.  This is the University’s third new building over the last four years.

Capital Maintenance – Funding of almost $10.0 million, which includes funding for all seven (7) of the University’s capital maintenance projects.

As I stated earlier when the Governor’s Budget was first released, the University’s budget will still have to be developed to cover annual fixed cost increases (i.e. faculty promotions, utilities, software maintenance, etc.), increases in funding for scholarships, funding new academic programs, and additional funding for the University’s portion of the salary pool.  We are currently developing a recommendation on tuition and fee increases based on THEC’s range of 0 – 2.0% for presentation to the Board of Trustees.   We will also present a July base budget to the Board for approval, with a revised budget presented later in the fall. 

As always, thank you for your good work and stay safe.

Sidney A. McPhee
Sidney.McPhee@mtsu.edu